ANNE BRADSTREET

 "THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT"

NOTES

5-8.

Flesh & spirit are sisters.  But in Bradstreet's world view, the spirit was superior to the flesh.  Spirit, or reason, ought to be in control of the flesh, or passion.

14.

Flesh holds that the physical is reality while the spiritual realm is imaginary.  Bradstreet of course holds to the old Platonic view that the physical realm is less real that the realm of ideas.  The chair you are sitting on will probably be gone in 100 years.  The idea of the chair will still be around.  Ideas are eternal and unchanging; the physical temporal and changable.

24.

Flesh admits that the physical is changing, but still asserts that it is the true reality.

25.

Flesh offers Spirit the temptations of the flesh - fame, riches, pleasure, etc.

37-42.

Spirit gives the proper response.  Unregenerate part - the part of the person that cannot be saved but instead must be abandoned through death.

107-108.

Just as flesh & spirit have different fathers (Adam vs God), so they have different destinies (earth vs. heaven).